The Castle, 2002. A family fights to keep their home when a nearby airport wants to expand into their land, taking their case as far as the High Court.

Sacco and Vanzetti, 2006. Through interviews and their prison writings, documents the story of Italian immigrants and anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti who were executed for murder in 1927.

True Grit, 2010. Following the murder of her father by hired hand Tom Chaney, 14-year-old farm girl Mattie Ross sets out to capture the killer along with a U.S. Marshall and a Texas Ranger.

A selection of our new titles can be found on our "New Books" display
atop the reference section in the library lobby. Enjoy your browsing!

Friday, February 20, 2015

Due to severe weather, the law library at the University of Kentucky will be closed Saturday (2/21). As of Saturday, February 21st the law library plans to open at noon on Sunday, February 22nd. These hours are subject to change at anytime due to weather. Updates will be posted here on KLaw Prints and on the University of Kentucky Law Library website.

Monday, February 9, 2015

The popular and youth cultures of the United States celebrate the selfie photograph. Selfies of celebrities at award shows are the crème de la crème of the genre. What could be on the opposite end of that spectrum? Might I suggest that if you murder someone, it is poor form to snap a selfie with you and the victim.

On Wednesday, February 4, 2015, the authorities in Jeannette, Pennsylvania discovered 16-year-old Ryan Mangan's dead body in his residence. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. Two days later, Westmoreland County officials charged 16-year-old Maxwell Morton with homicide, first-degree murder, and possession of a firearm by a minor. The police are reporting that Morton used SnapChat to capture an image of himself with the victim in the background. One of the recipients of the SnapChat took a screenshot before the image deleted itself. As you can probably guess, this image helped the police to generate a possible suspect in the homicide. It is being reported that Morton confessed to killing Mangan.

Time will tell whether Morton is found guilty of any crime. That said, our society is at an interesting crossroads with respect to social media, youth culture, and criminology. Television is filled with crime dramas, and I assumed that after watching a few hours of these shows you would learn tips for getting away with crimes. Apparently, there is an opposite force in play. There is a criminal pathology that requires individuals to brag about their accomplishments. For example, Russian criminal gang members cover their bodies in tattoos memorializing their misdeeds. Apparently, American teenagers do not need the hardened look that comes from a Siberian work camp, they can have the glossy and filtered product of a smart phone.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

International Law, via the Outer Space Treaty, treats space and uninhabited bodies such as the moon as "the common heritage of mankind." This concept, borrowed from the Law of the Sea, is supposed to mean that no individual nation-state can monopolize, exploit, or otherwise impair the rights of all to these vast expanses of territory and any resources they may contain. Unfortunately, the handful of space-faring nations may have already impaired the ability to venture beyond the Earth, albeit completely by accident.

It turns out that satellites, booster rockets, and other sorts of man-made objects put into space actually deteriorate over time, and thus, we now have a layer of "space debris" or "orbital junk" surrounding our planet. The problem with this is that these pieces of space junk have the potential to damage spacecraft trying to leave Earth's atmosphere, thereby restricting space exploration, and also creating more space junk that will further limit space exploration. It may eventually reach the level where spaceflight from Earth is rendered impossible.

Incidentally, for fans of science fiction, this problem will form one of the premises of an upcoming novel by noted speculative fiction author, Neal Stephenson. As a reference librarian, I highly recommend Stephenson's works to anyone who likes science fiction (and the occasional historical fiction) that incorporates sound science while maintaining a devotion to plot, characterization, and humor. Be warned, however: Stephenson's novels typically are on the long side, tend to be heavy on detail, and generally require the reader to pay attention. In short, they're fantastic!

About the Library

The Alvin E. Evans Law Library is an integral part of the University of Kentucky College of Law, and this blog will seek to highlight resources available at the law library, to disseminate library news and information to members of the Kentucky Law Community, and to welcome visitors to the collection.